Magic wand in Elements 7

[DorsetDude]

Hi

I was trying to follow a demo from a magazine cover regarding merging 2 exposures where one is for sky and one for foreground. This was in Elements.
The crux of this method revolved around using the magic wand tool to select the sky. In the demo, the bloke manged to select all the sky, including all the bits between tree branches etc by unselecting "contiguous", using the wand tool and then using select similiar and a couple of new selections holding the shift key and wand again to "add to selection"

My picture has a blandish sunset sky (no clouds) so is not blue all over, the foreground is dark. when I try to use the wand tool it does not select large areas of sky but rather loads of little selections, and it takes me loads of "adds" which dont work because it then starts selecting the foreground as well even though this is almost black compared to the coloured sky.
I have senstivity set to 32 on the options bar for it.

What am I doing wrong? :bonk: With the wand tool do you click and drag or just click?

Cheers all!

 

[swanseamale47]

you could try changing the 32 for a higher number 60-90 maybe and see if that helps, I can't remember if E7 has the quick selection tool combined with the magic wand if it has that will be a better option as you roughly "paint" over the are you want to select.
Failing that quick mask may work, with that you paint over the area you want to select (fairly neatly) and then click on the quick mask option to make your selection.

 

[DorsetDude]

Hi

Yes there is a quick select tool in E7, using that though doesnt select all the sky coloured bits in between all the tree branches. I tried upping 32 to 40 odd, didnt seem to make much difference to the uselessness of it last night! I'll try a higher number.

I dont think there is a quick mask option in elements.

I'll have to retry the magazine tutorial using the same image he had and make sure it works ok on that first perhaps. Its on the CD with it I believe.

thanks

Edit: had another go, apparently with the wand you just click, this certainly made it work better, this is what I got, not brilliant, but for a few minutes..